saraewood.com

So, last night Tobias needed a new diaper. We were in West Oakland. The only thing that appeared to be a Safeway had been converted into a Baptist Church, so our remaining option was a corner liquor store - you know the kind, metal gates surrounding the building, cardboard advertisements for Miller High Life in the windows, one lone bulb lighting the place.

Thing is, to pay for the diapers - “Fitti” brand, I am not kidding - we needed to use a card, and to use a card there was a $2 surcharge. You’re stuck in West Oakland, don’t have any cash, you need a diaper so your baby’s mama doesn’t freak on you for not thinking to pick them up earlier in the day, you think you could also use a six-pack while you are at it, you have one of those credit cards that keep showing up in the mail. What would you do? You pay with the card. You need diapers now and that $2 is not real anyway is it? Not yet. Not til it fucks up your credit and you can never buy your own car or house or even think of paying off your credit card debt - which by now is chock full of surcharges, service fees, late payment charges, you name it.

Yet another way we have institutionalized keeping poor people poor.

On Salon.com this week, an article was published titled “A mother’s love” by Sallie Tisdale. Definitely the type of title I am not normally drawn too - as it sounds so corny and all. But for some reason I clicked on it and started reading and couldn’t stop. It was a sad and poignant piece of writing and I found it quite moving. So, in my new series on irony, I thought I would include a pull quote from the text.

“The task of children is differentiation, and that means difference — different values, different goals. The struggle of a child is partly the struggle to be seen as something other than a child, until it becomes true. The struggle of a parent is that we never stop feeling like a parent, and a little responsible for their behavior. These are complex and textured relationships; we want them to grow, we want them to stay, and they want the same impossible things.”

Barrage après la saison sèche - Lac de Péligre, Centre, Haïti - © Martin Baran

One factor that drove the central plateau farmers of Haiti into deeper poverty in the mid-50s was the construction of a huge hydro-electric dam which forced them from their land.

The farmers were driven off their lands with the promise of electricity for the greater good of the country. Today, down the road from the huge dam, those same people are dying for lack of electricity in health clinics whose power comes and goes without warning. The farmers have no electricity, no water and no money to show for what they have sacrificed.

Health NGO working in the area worth knowing about: Zanmi Lasante